Defending IMF Financial Terrorism

On March 29, New York Times[1] editors headlined "Strengthening the IMF." What demands abolition, they support. It doesn't surprise.

Longstanding Times policy supports wealth, power and privilege. Populist interests are spurned. Unmet human needs are ignored. Managed news misinformation is featured. Wrong over right is endorsed. It's been so from inception.

Public wealth shifts to private hands. Western bankers and other corporate favorites profit hugely. Ordinary people suffer.

Indebted nations are obligated to take new loans. They're needed them to service old ones. Doing so increases indebtedness. Structural adjustment harshness follows. It's force-fed. Debtor nations have no choice. IMF diktats demand:

Human welfare and economies are sacrificed on the alter of paying bankers first. That's how predatory IMF diktats work. Don't expect New York Times editors to explain.

According to Paul Craig Roberts, IMF loans don't help world economies. They shield "private banks from their own mistakes at the expense of the world economy."

IMF policy mandates stabilizing exchange rates linked to the dollar and bridging temporary payment imbalances. Article I of its Articles of Agreement [2]says it lends:

"to give confidence to members by making the general resources of the Fund temporarily available to them under adequate safeguards, thus providing them with opportunity to correct maladjustments in their balance of payments without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity."

It claims it provides loans to reduce poverty and increase economic development. "In difficult economic times," it says, it "helps countries to protect the most vulnerable in a crisis."

It never operated as mandated. Its policies are polar opposite. They're ruthlessly exploitive. They've been that way from inception.

Measures include "land reform, tight control of trade, state enterprises, government-funded research and infrastructure, high tariff barriers to protect infant industries from foreign competition, and favoring certain sectors of the economy through subsidies and state-directed investment."

(8) Wealthy nations lose out. America "suffered the decimation of our manufacturing sector, declining average wages, growing inequality, an increase in the average work week, a ballooning deficit in the US balance of trade, and a growing mountain of debt (government debt, consumer debt, corporate debt)."